Harriet Doerr Read online

  When I got to Smith, four special delivery letters from the donor of the roses were in my box, and Northampton was bright with fall. I signed up for music and astronomy and Catullus. Three weeks later, leaves began to drop from trees, afternoons turned cold, and, not far away and visible from my window, a boat started crisscrossing Paradise Pond, while its two-man crew dragged the lake for the body of a student, thought to have drowned herself there.

  At this same window, looking in the opposite direction, I might see, a few months later, the mailman making his way toward me through the drifts of snow on Green Street, a letter from across the continent already in his hand.

  With friends, I frequented a nighttime waffle shop, returning to my living quarters just before lockout. On weekends we patronized a pastry shop, where each of us ordered half a fudge sandwich. The result of these indulgences was going home for Christmas twenty pounds heavier than when I left.

  “You look different,” everyone said, and I was thankful for the straight, short dresses we wore in 1927.

  That winter vacation, as far as I can see in my backward glance, was without flaw. Unflawed my unchanged bedroom with its window opening on a sleeping porch. Unchanged our old dog of mixed breed, Carlo, who lay on the chair decreed to be his, sleeping the end of his life away.

  As though from a Christmas cornucopia spilled the scent of cedar, fir, juniper, and pine, the holly wreath on the front door, the garland on the stairs, the tree hung with tinsel, cranberries, and popcorn balls. The cornucopia poured out a gardenia corsage kept chilled in our icebox until the second it was pinned on the shoulder of a fringed, white-beaded dress. It rained down a dance and a new musical, The Desert Song, and some perfume named Nuit de Noel. It rained down a man, he of the four special delivery letters and the three dozen red roses.

  By June, I had lost twenty pounds in Northampton and enrolled at Stanford, where I spent the next year and a half. Forty-seven years would pass before I graduated.

  In the spring, when I was twenty and he was twenty-two and graduating from Stanford, the man who brought me the roses and I decided to get married in the fall. That summer I went to Europe with a friend named Lydia. Her father’s first cousin was our chaperone. Her presence seemed normal in 1930. Of this trip, what I remember most frequently are the events following my purchase of a book. It was June, it was Florence, and the book was a Tauchnitz edition of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, bought at a stall near the Ponte Vecchio. We were staying at a pensione on the Arno, and it was there I read D. H. Lawrence’s novel, which was banned at that time and for the next twenty-nine years in the United States.

  We traveled on to Venice, where Lydia borrowed the book, then on to Switzerland, where, in Zermatt, our chaperone asked to read it. When she finished it, three days later, she pronounced that the book must go at once. That afternoon we walked up a path beside a rushing stream in the shadow of the Matterhorn and followed it to a footbridge, where we stopped midway across the torrent. At this point the guardian of our itinerary and innocence took Lady Chatterley out of her bag.

  Did she speak a few words? I only know the three of us watched together as the lovely, clear-printed volume was swept into the rapids and disappeared.

  There followed, beginning a few months later, forty-two years of marriage, including two separate pieces of time which, recollected now, impress me as nearly perfect. Later on, after my husband’s death, another came along, and it too approached perfection.

  Totally spared by the passage of, not actual, but remembered time are the summers the four of us, as a family, spent at our first beach. These were the years of the thirties, when there was very little right in the rest of the world and everything right where we were. The town was small, well served by one grocery, one drugstore, a post office, and a telephone switchboard for calling out. Telegrams could be sent and received at the train station. I never discovered whether it was the slow economy or the fact that passengers in the cars that sped past on the highway never turned to look that prevented change. But I am convinced that the scattered houses on the beach and on the hill, the expanse of empty sand, the endless and untroubled coming on of days and nights, the slow hours passing unmeasured and unnoticed, were my first intimations of paradise.

  As I recall it, the hill was wooded with eucalyptus and pine, with sage and buckwheat in the spaces between. There was a canyon full of honeysuckle, where someone had hung a rope swing from a tree branch. There was a narrow dirt lane lined with nasturtiums, another with morning glories. From the top of the hill, where we walked at sunset, we could see the ocean wrapping itself around the world.

  On overcast days we drove to one of Junípero Serra’s missions, where a Franciscan father in sandals and brown habit would point out Spanish and Indian relics in the museum. “The baptistery,” he would say as we moved on, or “The organ,” or “The chalice.” Then all of us, unconnected as we were to churches, would listen with undiminished attention, even though this father had been our guide last time and had shown us these same things.

  Then we would be let out of the church and into a walled garden so packed and crowded with fruit trees, vines, and flowers that a hoe, or even a spade, could scarcely find a space between the roots. There was a sundial in this garden, and a hollowed stone bowl for birds to bathe in. An elderly Franciscan was in charge of this modest square of glory, and, on our regular returns year after year, we grew to know him.

  “It is beautiful,” we would tell him, pointing out a poppy or a clove pink. “And you have done all this yourself.” And the rope-girdled gardener would point out a sunflower grown from seed.

  Then came the summer when, after visiting the chapel and the church, we stepped out into the walled garden and found him gone. A brown-haired, thin young man was in his place.

  “Where is the other father who was here for so long?” I asked.

  There followed a pause, and I went on, “Did he die?”

  The new gardener shook his head, allowed a minute to pass, then said, “He was reassigned.” With that he picked up a watering can and turned his back.

  On the way home we discussed possible reasons for the transfer.

  “He let the hose run overnight,” one of us said.

  “He forgot to fill the birdbath,” said another.

  But I knew another reason. They feared he might start to love this garden more than heaven.

  A few months ago, my son, who must plan a future for his two rescued cats, visited the Humane Society shelter in the town where he lives. He investigated the cat quarters.

  “How long do you keep them?” he asked the person in charge, and was told that every cat was either adopted or became a lifetime boarder.

  “That’s a pretty good place,” said my son.

  The second impossibly flawless piece, or pieces, of my life were the ones spent in various parts of Mexico. How is it, I think now, that I cannot find a familiar name anywhere on the map of Mexico without seeing, in the most brilliant colors, something that happened to me there twenty or thirty or forty years ago?

  Once after a late-summer rainstorm we skidded off the road between Querétaro and Toluca, dropped a few feet into a field, completing two full turns as we went, and stopped at last in a pasture among a dozen cows. From the tree stump where he sat, a few yards away, the man in charge of these animals regarded us without comment or concern. A number of star-shaped white flowers sprang from the stony ground at his feet, like petals before a bride.

  “This must happen to him every day,” I said in the direction of my husband, who was already out of the car, examining the mud and the depth of the wheels in it, and saying, “We’ll have to get a mule.”

  But almost immediately, the dilemma began to resolve itself, as dilemmas often do in Mexico. I recall no conversation. The cows’ keeper, in his poncho the color of wet earth, simply raised one arm, and a small boy materialized from behind a clump of magueys. This child, happy to discover strangers and a car in trouble, ran off barefoot down
the highway, to return ten minutes later sitting among coiled ropes on the back of the mule an old man was leading toward us.

  During the towing operation that followed, I had time to see that, behind the meadow where we were mired, a thousand more of the white flowers shaped like stars had thrust up their stems everywhere—in the furrows of the field, in the ditch beside the road, between the broken boulders on the slope behind.

  Then the car was back on the road, the meadow, mud, the cows, and white stars out of sight.

  Once again on pavement and heading south, my husband, as though I had asked, said, “Those white wildflowers are called estrellas de San Juan.”

  When we lived in Mexico City, we occupied one of two houses not far apart that had the same street number. We lived at Alpes 1010, and so, farther down the block, did someone else.

  The mailman, considering this no problem, made few mistakes.

  “Why not speak to someone in authority at the post office?” we asked him, and the cartero said, “That will not be necessary. I already know the people in both houses.”

  On Mailman’s Day we gave our orderly-minded friend an extra bonus.

  On the Day of the Garbage Man, ours came to the door dressed for Sunday, and so did the street sweeper on his holiday and on his the night watchman, whom we never saw by day. Each night, these guardians of our safety patrolled their assigned number of blocks, blowing at intervals, as they went, whistles of so plaintive a tone they might have been designed to mourn the death of a child in the family or a major natural disaster.

  Carpenters and masons had their day, and construction workers in hard hats, who balanced on steel beams and marked their ascent with a wooden cross at each new level. This is a country where accidents are anticipated and frequently occur.

  When I telephoned my son to ask, How do you feel, he said, “I am not one to say I feel well when I don’t.”

  Instead of houses across our street in Mexico City, there was a barranca, whose steep slope, wooded with eucalyptus, fell abruptly to a drainage ditch at the bottom. People who had things to throw threw them here.

  When our old dog, Bowser, died, Camilo Corona, the mozo who came with our house, suggested that we throw his body into the barranca.

  I asked, possibly through tears, if he truly meant to dispose of a member of our family among rubbish that included grass cuttings and hedge clippings, rotting pineapples and broken bottles, rusty automobile parts and the skeletons of animals long since discarded there, and he nodded.

  He said, “That is the easiest way, señora.” Then he paused and added, “Where else?”

  At that, I instructed the mozo to dig a grave at one corner of our small square of lawn, and immediately drove to Sears Roe-buck on Insurgentes Sur. Here I bought, not a shroud, but something else, which seemed to be Bowser’s size, a heavy canvas zipper bag.

  Arrived at home, I saw that Camilo had dug a shallow hole.

  “At least half a meter deeper,” I told him.

  Camilo’s eyes were on the canvas bag. It was then I saw the mozo considering my excesses in his mind. First, the probable price of the canvas bag, then the mound of earth he had dug up so far and the amount he had yet to dig, then the image of Bowser himself, in death, as in life, plainly not a thoroughbred.

  “The ground is damp,” I told him, “and the afternoon is cold,” all the while knowing Camilo had four children at home, and estimating the number of blankets the money spent on the bag would buy, I still went on without hesitation. “The bag is for the dog to be buried in.”

  Thus are our nightmares born.

  After we had been in our house a month and Camilo had settled into a routine of mopping the tile floors, washing the windows, and sweeping the sidewalk, we began to notice that the telephone usually rang, not for us, but for him. He would stand, a short, somehow pathetic figure, with solemn eyes and stubbled chin, near a table in the sala, his head bowed, with the instrument at his ear, while he listened in silence to a voice speaking at length at the other end. As for Camilo, he spoke only two words, “Bueno” and “Adiós.” When we inquired, after several weeks, about the caller, Camilo would always say, “Mi tío.”

  When we asked, “Is your uncle in difficulties?” Camilo would shake his head, look at the floor, and start to sweep.

  One late-October day, Camilo approached us and, staring down at the mop and bucket, said, “There is illness in my family.”

  “Whose illness?” one of us said, and on hearing it was the mozo’s frail old mother, the other said, “We will lend you the money.” Then a quantity of cash was handed to Camilo and an agreement made that this loan would be repaid out of his salary at the rate of ten pesos a week.

  But the telephone calls continued, and after four or five of them, Camilo told us that his wife was in the hospital with an infection connected with childbirth, Again we lent money, again we established a loan, but this time we had to raise the mozo’s salary so that he could make the weekly payments.

  Still the calls came, and each time the mozo hung up, we said, “Su tío, otra vez?” and Camilo answered, “Si.”

  In November, Camilo told us there was an emergency connected with his oldest child. “She fell at school,” he said, “and broke her arm in two places.” She was at the children’s clinic, he said, and partial payment was required.

  “Where are these three institutions?” we asked.

  Within two days, the mozo brought us the addresses, written in pencil on torn.bits of paper. On Saturday morning we drove off with a map, the three addresses, and the legal names of the three patients. Camilo opened the garage door and looked solemnly after us as far as the corner where we turned.

  Our first stop was at a stately old house, balconied, porched, and pillared, set in the center of a city block, hidden by a forest of trees and shrubs and the rampant vines that had been allowed to invade them.

  “Maximilian and Carlota probably came here for dinner,” I told my husband as he knocked at a wide, heavy door. A nun opened it, smiled, and called another nun. We produced our creased documents and inquired about Camilo’s mother. The two nuns summoned a third. All three shook their heads.

  “Yes, we take care of las ancianas,” one said.

  “But this old woman is not among them,” said another.

  “We cannot help you,” the third added, and all three smiled.

  Nor had anyone at the women’s hospital, our next stop, heard of the mozo’s wife, under either her maiden or her married name.

  “We have never registered a patient with those names,” the receptionist said, and turned back to her ledger.

  “Do you still want to try the children’s clinic?” my husband asked, as soon as we were outside, and I shook my head.

  In the end, we did what we could. We raised Camilo’s wages again, so that he could pay us back more quickly. But this time the agreement carried a condition.

  “The señora and I have discussed this matter,” my husband said, “and agreed upon a condition of employment.” He paused to look out the window at our sparse-berried pepper tree. “Your uncle must never call you here again.” Camilo, staring down at the floor, nodded without lifting his head.

  When we left Mexico at the end of our stay and had to catch an early train to the border, we gave Camilo a cash settlement to cover the required severance pay, as well as accrued vacation time. An acquaintance, learning of this, laughed. “Say goodbye to your money,” this person told us. “Your mozo will be drinking it up for the next two months.”

  But at five o’clock in the morning, Camilo was there, sweeping the sidewalk, sober. He carried out suitcases. He gave us his key to the house. We said, “Adiós,” and shook his hand. When we looked back from the corner, he was waving.

  If it is possible to remember too much, then in the case of Mexico, I do. Images spill over and threaten to become lost. But I know that I am better nourished now by images and echoes than I ever was by bread and wine.

  Consider, th
en, my morning drive home from the American High School on my day for the car pool. Entering the district of Tacubaya, almost adjacent to the school, I would find myself in a slum and, driving through it, would often see three small torn boys waiting for a second-class bus. These were children who worked for coins at the supermarket where I shopped. Pushing and shoving their rivals, they crowded outside the automatic doors, waved their arms, and called out, “Me!”

  “Yo! Yo! Yo!” the children shouted, leaning singly or in twos or threes into the customer’s path. They fastened their urgent, sometimes infected, eyes on a prospect and called, “Señora! Yo!”

  When I recognized these children on the street corner in Tacubaya, I sometimes offered them a ride to the market, and four or five of them would push their way in. Benjamin, who was eight years old and often helped me, was usually among them.

  As soon as we started off, Benjamin asked me to turn on the radio. All leaned forward from their seats to listen to mariachi music and to the commercials that intervened.

  One of these, much repeated on the airways and on marketplace loudspeakers, advertised laundry soap. A woman’s voice would sing to us about the qualities of this soap. She would sing of its softness and its purity. It is like the white snow, she would sing, and my passengers would raise their voices too.

  And now, with the car’s windows closed against the cold, the smell of the children’s unwashed bodies mingled with their choir-boy voices lifted in praise of something they saw rarely and at a distance, on the tops of volcanos, snow.

  When I write about Mexico, I transfer myself there wholly. I trip over its broken sidewalks, stop for freesias at its flower stalls, wave down its taxis. If there is time, I may still write about my Spanish lessons in a cold formal sala, where my teacher and I sat on stiff gilt chairs, with a tiny electric heater at our feet.

  “I grew up on an hacienda,” my teacher said. “I had a horse named Betty. I watched the revolutionaries ride her away.”

  I may write about my rides on the thirty-centavobus to the center of the city, where I got off at the corner of Madero and San Juan de Letrán. “If you want to see marijuana,” people said, “it is growing among the weeds next to the sidewalk the entire length of San Juan de Letrán.”